In 1991, while carrying out research related to the writing of a work for bagpipes, I first learned of the Urnosian phenomenon: had a shepherding people, in the third millennia B.C., developed a form of musical notation? What a fascinating discovery! At that time, the scientific world agreed that it lent some credibility to the hypotheses of German archaeologist Alexander Von Stratten. This served as my point of departure for writing Deux pièces pour cornemuse. In 1994, British anthropologist Tom Blake advanced new hypotheses that opposed Von Stratten’s theories. It was based upon these new propositions that the Urnos collective conceived the performance they presented in 2004 and then re-staged in 2011. It took three years of effort by the team of innovators involved to bring the project to fruition. Multidisciplinary artist Guy Laramée reproduced their musical instruments as accurately as possible. Claire Gignac directed the musical workshops and Martine Beaulne conceived and then staged the narrative structure. My role entailed writing, for the reconstituted instruments, a music which could have been from this longlost people. How was I to approach this? How could one know? Yet, why not believe it possible, let oneself be transported by these sounds from the depths of time, and journey to the reaches of a collective memory possibly still well-inscribed in our genes? — André Hamel